How To Be Gay — David M. Halper | Harvard Universy Prs

Contents:

• HOW TO BE GAY
• HOW TO BE GAY BY DAVID M HALPER – REVIEW
• HOW TO BE GAY
• ‘HOW TO BE GAY’ BY DAVID M. HALPER
• HOW TO BE GAY
• HOW TO BE GAY - SOFTVER
• HALPER TEACH “HOW TO BE GAY”

HOW TO BE GAY

No one rais an eyebrow if you suggt that a guy who arrang his furnure jt so, rolls his ey exaggerated disbelief, lik techno mic or show tun, and knows all of Bette Davis’s bt l by heart might, jt possibly, be gay. Inspired by the notor unrgraduate urse of the same tle that Halper tght at the Universy of Michigan, provokg cri of outrage om both the right-wg media and the gay prs, How To Be Gay trac gay men’s cultural difference to the social meang of style.

Far om beg terred by stereotyp, Halper nclus that the geni of gay culture ris some of s most spised featur: s atheticism, snobbery, melodrama, adoratn of glamour, ritur of women, and obssn wh mothers. ” The great value of tradnal gay male culture, he further poss, perhaps even more challenggly, “ris some of s most spised and repudiated featur: gay male femy, diva worship, atheticism, snobbery, drama, adoratn of glamour, riture of women and obssn wh the figure of the mother.

Among the most unual thgs about “How to Be Gay” is that is, at heart, a 500-pl-page work that explor a fundamental kd of gay sensibily by ncentratg almost exclively on one actrs, Joan Crawford, and on a sgle scene a sgle movie, the 1945 drama “Mildred Pierce. Halper teas an enormo amount out of this scene, cludg the sense of “glamour and abjectn” gay dienc fd Crawford, and how the film packag the “transgrsive spectacle of female strength, tonomy, feists and power.

HOW TO BE GAY BY DAVID M HALPER – REVIEW

Halper works up to an argument (impossible to summarize here) about how the film evok a “dissint perspective” on the very ia of romantic is articulate about many other thgs this book, cludg how gay men often fd more ronance straight cultural artifacts than gay on. What he n be ncerned about, seems, is the culture of Gay, passed down through generatns of slappers, proppg up the bars of Soho London, Chelsea New York, and the Marais Paris, all quarters which are now as ad as the proverbial Halper has wrten an over-long book, more lolised s applitn than he seems fully to appreciate, about the aspects of beg gay other than sexual choice. He adms that "Amerin" is an unspoken adjective much of what he has to say, cludg the tle of the book – I gus "How to be an Amerin Gay" would be an even more unvg subject than the one he has chosen.

Outsi Ameri, he reliably gets thgs wrong, suggtg that Bollywood mils may reprent the same sort of gay cult to Indian gay men that Sex and the Cy do to Amerins – he's clearly never seen a film a Calcutta cema, or he would have noticed that the appeal is not a gay thg at all at s source. He don't wre about cloth, or gtur, or ga, or any of what intifi a gay man to another at 80 pac, or the syntax and vobulary and slang which mak them mutually clear at closer quarters – I mean, you n't always be sayg "Have you seen Mommie Deart? The book would have been much stronger if were a discipled 120 pag about Mildred Pierce, and s off-shoots – Mommie Deart and var drag-show renstctns – specifilly examed om the viewpot of a middle-aged gay man.

I feel pretty much left out, never havg seen Mildred Pierce, as a blissfully funny book about homosexualy the 19th century, Strangers, Graham Robb provid a list of thgs that at the time were thought to e or to dite homosexualy.

HOW TO BE GAY

It was surprisg, fact, that anyone end up heterosexual, so all-enpassg were the the quali Halper intifi wh gayns are beg "a great dancer or ok, that you have a weakns for mid-century morn, or that you drive a VW Golf" – a VW Golf? Elsewhere, lists of gay-nnected activi n stretch to surprisg plac: "beg gay had somethg to do wh likg Broadway mils, or listeng to show tun or torch songs or Judy Garland, or playg the piano, wearg fluffy sweaters, drkg cktails, smokg cigarett and llg each other 'girliend'.

Elsewhere, Halper wonrs whether gay culture is dyg out, on the basis that – he claims – straight people bought up the ho of gay people after they died of Aids the 1980s and 90s, and that the numbers of gay bars major ci are on the cle om peaks the 70s. After all, those lns hookg up on Grdr are formg powerful nnectns wh hundreds, sometim thoands of other gay men, tossg each other asi afterwards wh savage abandon, and are dog whout the aid of mercial bars.

‘HOW TO BE GAY’ BY DAVID M. HALPER

That don't seem like such an awful age of the mp persona, the bg ment, the ironic alln is not passg, exactly, but is movg towards a particular sectn of a particular gay muny at a particular pot time. An tertg book about gay culture would spend time wh a range of gay men, of different ag and class and backgrounds, fdg out how their social works were formed, as well as vtigatg how they liked to be urse, that would be a great al harr than jt gog on about a uple of scen om 40s movi that you and your iends simply adore. You'd hardly gus, om Halper's acunt, that gay culture was anythg but owned and monstrated by late-middle-aged whe men about four Amerin cultural nfince is driven on by s ual fuel, money – some time soon the ccial gay diva will not be Lady Gaga, but Fish Leong.

HOW TO BE GAY

If they ever read this book, which they won't, they would probably put their hands to their throat the gture known to German gays as "the necklace of pearls", roll their ey, and say what we always say of a tragic effort all round – "Pur-lease. -- Culture and genre -- The passn of the crawford -- Sufferg quotatn marks -- The bety and the mp -- Mommie queert -- Gay fay romance -- Men act, women appear -- The sexual polics of genre -- Tragedy to melodrama -- Bch baskets -- Gay femy -- Genr and genre -- The meang of style -- Irony and misogyny -- What is gay culture?

Out there on the dreary plas, Halper stcts stunts who uld be his grandsons irony, archns, melodramatic flouncg, the worship of Judy Garland and all the other queeny foibl and fetish that most of thought had been disrd when gay men marched out of the closet and asserted their right to rpect and acceptance. That charge was dropped, and MIT sent him off on study leave for a uple of years; his next amic appotment, however, was faraway Atralia, where he n't have ma many iends if he imperialistilly announced, as he do his book, that "beg gay is like beg Amerin" and prented himself as the proselytisg agent of "total, global queerns".

His book vot lerally hundreds of pag to the obssive analysis of a tfight between Joan Crawford and her bchy dghter the film noir Mildred Pierce, wh footnot on Faye Dunaway's maenadic impersonatn of Crawford on the rampage wh a at-hanger Mommie Deart and Sofia Coppola – the distguished profsor, cintally, misspells her name – lewdly mimickg both Crawford and Dunaway a mic vio for Sonic abive enunter between Crawford and Ann Blyth Mildred Pierce is, for Halper, a Frdian primal scene, an thorative primer om which gay men n learn how to be ersatz women, sufferg wh grandiloquent flair while rollg their ey and sptg epigrammatic put-downs at each other. This swishg mak me wonr whether al-Qaida's fanatics may have a pot about the nce of the the 1960s, San Sontag – whose Not on Camp articulated a few fleet aphorisms most of what Halper spends more than 500 pag paraphrasg – weled a new gay formalist style cricism by clarg: "In place of a hermentics we need an erotics of art. Contrary to what nservativ feared back 2000 when he tght his first urse at the Universy of Michigan tled “How to Be Gay”, David Halper do not have a “Straight to Sissy Five Easy Steps” method of doctratg youths to the gay liftyle.

HOW TO BE GAY - SOFTVER

Rather, Halper’s book is an terventn agast those who tmpet the “ath of gay culture” (which he argu has been clared for over 40 years now) now that wing tolerance and greater visibily of gays the media should make Judy Garland, show tun, and drag queens obsolete.

Instead he vtigat how a “distctively gay way of beg” is rooted a “dissint way of feelg and relatg to the world” that ntu to nourish a distct gay cultural practice terted mp, Lady Gaga, and re-ns of The Goln Girls, even though we have out gay entertaers and the melancholic realism of Brokeback Mounta to directly pict .

Halper very well uld have tled the book “Everythg I Know About Beg Gay, I Learned om Watchg Joan Crawford”, bee he spends over a hundred pag of his 500 pl page tome analyzg inic scen om Mildred Pierce and the mp classic Mommie Deart. The batn of feme glamour and abjectn that gay men assume through feme intifitn and appropriatn—through drag, other words, or through the cult of Joan Crawford—mak available to gay men a posn that is at once dignified and grad, ser and unser, tragic and lghable. Departg om many of San Sontag’s famo Not on Camp, Halper mak a se for mp as polilly subversive and a se study for the plited stcture of gay intifitn: “Camp works to dra sufferg of the pa that also do not ny.

HALPER TEACH “HOW TO BE GAY”

Sce there was no public mol for gay men to mourn their ad, they followed the gay cultural tactic of mp and appropriated one that intified solidly wh the feme posn of grief, but retaed a tone of parody to lsen the stg of loss.

One gets the sense that Halper anticipat his greatt tractors to not be social nservativ (though he has been their pariah the past), but stead to be other gay men who fear the sentialism of acknowledgg the role a distct gay culture plays shapg gay inty. Halper narrat the history of this mascule reactn agast gay culture, cullg om his own memori the 70s of how newly “liberated” gay men appropriated the machismo of biker culture, mtach, and nstctn worker clothg to bat the stereotype of the pathetic queens and fairi of the prev generatn.

This is a valuable history lson to rears om subsequent generatns given that the signifiers of 70s gay masculy are now nsired the mpy light of The Village People, and th part of the gay culture om which today’s champns of machismo and normaly try to distance their selv.